Cynthia Onyedinmanasu Chinasaokwu Erivo (born 8 January 1987) is an English actress, singer, and songwriter.
She is known for her performance as Celie in the Broadway revival of The Color Purple, for which she won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical, the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, and the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Musical Performance in a Daytime Program, the latter two she shared with the rest of the cast.
Erivo ventured into films in 2018, with roles in the heist film Widows and the thriller Bad Times at the El Royale. In 2019, she portrayed abolitionist Harriet Tubman in the biopic Harriet, for which she earned nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
'Genius: Aretha' Takes Us Behind The Scenes With Their Team Of Black Creatives
essence.comGenius: Aretha, the first time the acclaimed series tells the truth about Black women—that we’re geniuses too.“She’s the first American in the series, the first woman, the first person of color and she was able to alchemize her life into sonic gold,” showrunner Suzan Lori-Parks says in the sneak peek, which ESSENCE got our hands on. “Aretha Franklin has an exceptional quality.”The woman embodying the late Franklin, who died in 2018 of advanced pancreatic cancer, is near EGOT winner Cynthia Erivo, who began listening to the Queen of Soul’s music when she was “little,” she says in the preview, which debuted at CTAM’s Summer 2020 Virtual Press Conference on Monday.“It feels good to share with the world that Black women contain genius.
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